


Another Memory

by BerryBagel



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Pseudo-Incest, concurrent with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 13:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerryBagel/pseuds/BerryBagel
Summary: Ben totally doesn't mind observing Klaus's life from the sidelines.  Watching Klaus fall in love with Dave is definitely not a painful experience for him.





	Another Memory

Ben hasn't died yet.  Ben hasn't even been  _ born _ yet.  The year is 1968, and there's no good reason for Ben to have to be here, save for some god playing fast and loose with the rules of the afterlife.

 

And yet, here Ben sits, in a bar in Vietnam.  Klaus has never once made a good decision in his life, and apparently doesn't plan on starting now.  Has he ever read  _ anything _ about the hellscape of a war that he's about to follow Dave into?  Ben’s pretty sure Dad must have made Klaus read a history book at some point during his childhood.  Although arguably, this whole situation might be even worse if Klaus does actually know what he's signing up for.

 

Klaus and Dave are at the very end of the bar.  They're both leaning into each other, laughing at some shared joke.  Ben wonders if Dave knows how completely head-over-heels Klaus is. Probably.  Dave looks equally smitten.

 

Ben isn't sitting at the bar.  He's standing by the wall. It's a busy night, and he doesn't like when people walk through him.  There's a girl standing near him, fixing her makeup. She had joined Klaus and Dave for their first round of drinks, giggling and handsy.  She shuffled off to Ben’s wall when it became apparent that three was, in this case, a crowd. She's still occasionally shooting wistful looks in Klaus and Dave’s general direction.

 

“Yeah, me too.” Ben tells her.  She can't see him, or hear him, or in any way perceive his presence, so she says nothing.

 

* * *

Klaus makes Ben a cup of coffee.  Then he makes himself a cup of coffee.  He's about to prepare a third for Dave, but Dave takes Ben’s cup and downs it in a single gulp.  Klaus gives Ben an apologetic shrug. There’s not too many of the instant coffee packets left. Can’t be wasting them on people who can’t drink coffee.

 

There’s an elderly man sitting across the table, yelling at Klaus in Italian.  He’s the grandfather of a guy in Klaus’s unit. Died right as they were shipping out, and now the poor guy has something he desperately wants to warn his grandson about from beyond the grave.  Ben isn’t sure what, because he doesn’t speak Italian. Klaus apparently doesn’t speak Italian either, or if he does he’s doing a great job of hiding it.

 

Most of the ghosts have been getting the message pretty quickly that Klaus isn’t interested in being their medium.  Klaus is doing a pretty admirable job of completely ignoring any indication that he’s anything other than a star-crossed soldier from the 1960’s.

 

Ben is lucky Klaus is still talking to  _ him _ .  They don’t talk much these days, but everyone is too busy to say much.  It means a lot that Klaus is willing to take any time out of his day to interact with his one walking reminder of 2019.

 

Ben is exactly one step away from having only ghost-grandpa to talk to.  Klaus starts in on an observation about instant coffee. Dave claps him on the shoulder and gets up from the table.  Klaus trails off mid-sentence to follow Dave away from the table like a puppy. Maybe Ben should learn Italian.

 

* * *

They’re back in 2019, so the end of the world is back on.  Ben hasn’t seen Dave around. Hopefully that means the poor guy found peace, and not that his ghost is still back in the 70’s, or something.

 

Sometimes Ben will walk into a room and Klaus will look up with uncharacteristically bright-eyed hope.  Then Klaus will see that, no, it’s just Ben. Ben can still hoard those moments before the look of crushing disappointment, though.

 

The absence of Dave’s ghost is doing more for Klaus than the presence of Ben’s ghost ever has.  Klaus is getting clean. Klaus doesn’t want to face the end of the world without the person he loves the most by his side.  In the absence of the person he loves the most, Klaus may be willing to settle for Ben.

 

Maybe Dave will show up for the end of the world after all.  Because Lord only knows if there’s one thing Ben’s been missing, it’s Dave’s general presence.  Seeing Klaus and Dave stare lovingly into each other eyes one last time...that’d be a quality knife to the heart.  Appropriate for the oncoming apocalypse.

 

Ben can’t control being a ghost.  He has the nagging feeling that he probably has some unfinished business with the living.  Maybe one living brother. ‘ _ Brother _ ’ being, in this case, a catchall term for a person he shares an unbreakable bond beyond death with.  And who, he sometimes tells himself to feel a little less disgusting, he shares no actual genetics with.  Dad didn’t care overly much about whatever the fuck Luther and Allison were getting up to. Because Dad sure was a pillar of moral authority.

 

* * *

They still have to figure out a lot about this corporeal form thing.  But they will. Because if Ben can solidly reach out and punch Klaus in the mouth, how much harder could it be to reach out with a gentler touch?

 

...Like a high five.  That’s the obvious application here, they agree.

 

They sit facing each other on the floor and try to focus.  They aren’t sure exactly what to focus on, so there’s some trial and error.  Strong emotions, maybe? That doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect. They try focusing on their hands, and the hazy spot where they should touch.  Nothing substantial from that either.

 

Klaus asks what Ben did the first time to make contact, but Ben doesn’t think it’s something  _ he _ did.  Klaus was the focal point, and as always, Ben was just the sorry fool who got sucked into his orbit.

  
“Try just focusing on me.” Klaus suggests.  Ben, who has spent a significant portion of his life trying his best  _ not _ to focus on Klaus, thinks that should be a pretty easy undertaking.

**Author's Note:**

> title is a reference to the MCR song The Only Hope For Me Is You, because that seemed appropriate :)


End file.
